They were a hard and practical people,
     and when they said
          they were willing to serve me,
I took what they had to give:
               bowls of rain,
     prayer-husks filled with meat.

(Their firstborn, I.)

They cut my foreskin
     when heat was a prisoner in the ground.
The trees stood naked
     though the sun in Taurus rose.

When I chewed twigs for a change
               of texture,
     they said the scars
          on the trees were fire-marks,
that buds were sorry
from smoke
          and the far blood’s branching.

I listened to them
          and grew: my hide, my legs,
the rhythm-and-rhythm
     of an animal glimpsed at dusk.

(I was silent but not still.)

Wearing a wreath
               of crocuses,
I walked the perimeter
     because I liked
                how the ground felt
under the soft pads of my feet.
     Wet with the night’s rain,
          it reminded me of my gift:
a silence that was ingrown,
               particular.

     Because they could do nothing
about the feeder flies,
          the nettles that bit my side,
     they did not like it
               when I moved,

     they who planted the seedlings,
the small hooded flowers
     where I tried to sleep.

I received their permission
               and their lies,
     and by guarding them,
by eating their brown bread,
          I thought I would move beyond
the fact of flesh.

(Strength in my muscles, my legs.
The sting in my side
     when I paced near the prickered fence.)

I kept my posture straight.
My mouth was wide and waiting.

Do you see?
          I too had desire,
but as befits a fallen world
               I could not survive
     unless I calmed them
               with my silence.

And so a childhood ended
               and was buried:
     quiet lion, latent lute,
their hands reaching to touch me.